


To Whatever End

by NightCourt_HighLady



Category: Throne of Glass Series - Sarah J. Maas
Genre: Angst, F/M, Heavy Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-22
Updated: 2018-06-22
Packaged: 2019-05-27 02:35:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,270
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15014786
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NightCourt_HighLady/pseuds/NightCourt_HighLady
Summary: Rowan's perspective of him finding out what happened to Aelin at the end of EOS. Lots of angst and pain in this one.





	To Whatever End

Something was wrong.

Something had gone terribly wrong and he _knew_ it in a way that he’d known little else before. His entire being was focused on getting to that beach because he knew that _something_ had happened there. He didn’t know what, but he knew Maeve’s battleship when he saw it.

A small voice underneath his panic quietly whispered a secret that he’d been avoiding for some time now. A secret related to his panic, his knowledge. He brushed it away. Now was not the time for self knowledge.

Now was the time to figure out why every single instinct he possessed was screaming _protect!_

He got off the damnably slow boat and ran to where he scented the rest. Where he scented Aelin. And froze

He saw blood. Pools and puddles of it and the white shirt he’d last seen on Aelin scattered in it. And her daggers. Her daggers. She never removed her weapons- but here they all were. Every one that he watched her put on before she walked into that mirror. Adrenaline born of fear crested through his veins like a wave to shore.

Something had gone horribly wrong.

He looked around at the faces. His former brothers, Elide, and Manon. What he found frightened him. He needed answers, but no one spoke.

He seized a dead looking Lorcan by the hair and held a knife to his throat. He _would_ get his answers.

“Where is Aelin.” The dead quality of his voice almost surprised him. Lorcan simply stared. Part of him saw the marks on his arm that showed his loss of his soul bond to Maeve. Part of him felt sympathy for Lorcan. The rest was roaring for the male’s death. He had something to do with this, Rowan _knew._

“ _Where is Aelin."_ Lorcan simply stared, regret shone in his eyes. The knife dug into Lorcan’s throat, blood for blood. He was getting those answers.

“ _Where is my wife?”_ That wasn’t supposed to come out. He wasn’t supposed to tell people yet. It was a last resort in case something happened to her. He couldn’t bring himself to care as Lorcan, unshakable Lorcan, swayed. He overheard Elide begin to sob at the word.

But Rowan’s heart stopped when he looked into Lorcan’s eyes as the unshakeable warrior began to weep.

He dug the dagger into Lorcan’s throat further, hands shaking.

“Please,” he begged his onetime friend. _Tell me what happened to her. Help me help me help me. Please help me._

“Maeve took her,” Manon answered for the speechless, weeping Lorcan.

Again, his heart froze in his chest. He barely heard Gavriel explain how Maeve had manipulated the blood oath to keep them from helping her. Rowan was frozen, too still to even remove the knife from Lorcan’s throat. Maeve had her. Maeve. Maeve who wanted Aelin like she’d wanted nothing else in centuries.

Finally, Lorcan spoke.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. Those words removed the paralysis Rowan had been under. The knife fell from suddenly nerveless fingers, as did Lorcan’s hair.

Manon came closer to him. She began to speak.

“The Lock is not what we thought it was,” she began. “The Lock was intended to remove the Valg from this land in the time of Brannon. It was forged of Mala’s life force. She was Brannon’s wife after she bound herself into a human body. Brannon was going to use it with the last of his waning life force to bind the Wyrdkeys back into the gate and close it. But Elena, queen of Adarlan, used the Lock. And got herself locked in a devil’s bargain with the gods.”

Rowan simply stared at her, realizing the truth before she said it.

“Mala’s power would return to the world and Elena was to guard the new scion of Brannon’s line without informing them of their role. To pour their life force into the Lock, trading their life for the removal of the Valg- and the gods. This was told to us by Elena herself, in the mirror. It dropped us here after.”

Rowan remembered the morning that he woke up to hear Aelin puking in the bathroom. _This_ was why. She knew she was to die. She _knew_. And she hadn’t told him. Likely because she knew he would have immediately locked her away somewhere that even the gods couldn’t find her.

Suddenly, Elide began to speak. Rowan felt a chill of foreboding.

“Maeve had me, she’d caught me. Aelin was entirely depleted of magic and Maeve knew it. So she-” the girl’s voice caught. “She still tried to defend herself. But Maeve whipped her with some mysterious magic power. Somehow Maeve knew about the Lock. She knew of the plan to forge the Keys back into the Gate. That’s why she took Aelin. She doesn’t want a new Lock forged. She wants the keys. To use them.

“She’s been planning this for.. Centuries. Since the beginning of all this. Since the first invasion of the Valg. She saw Aelin coming centuries in advance. Maeve knew that Brannon would leave her clues to find the keys, so she began to scheme a way to control Aelin.” Elide stopped and looked fearfully at Rowan. “She saw Aelin’s mate.” Something inside Rowan’s chest began to ache.

“She saw you,” Elide continued. “She needed to control you to control Aelin. So Maeve,” Elide swallowed, tears beginning to fall again. “She altered fate. Lyria wasn’t your mate. But Maeve forged the bond, and then sent soldiers to destroy her while you were away. To break you. So that when the time came, you’d swear the blood oath to her and be locked to her forever.”

Rowan’s hand unconsciously crept up to the tattoos on his face, touching the spot on his jaw that was Lyria’s name in the Old Tongue. He was astonished to discover that his face was damp with tears.

“Aelin has known for months.” Something cracked in his chest with a sound that should have been audible, but the only sound he heard was a small whimper that came out of his own throat.

“She’s known but didn’t want to tell you. And she- she will be Settling within the next few years. According to Maeve.” They could have been together. They _should_ have been together. Maeve had forced the connection with Lyria and used it to destroy him. To manipulate his Aelin. His Aelin, who would have been able to stay at his side for the rest of his eternity. For millennia. She was going to Settle.

Rowan was hearing as if down a tunnel. He only barely registered the words that Elide was saying. That his Aelin, his Fireheart, his wife, his _mate_ had been whipped yet again. Whipped to within an inch of her life and locked in an iron box with an iron mask over her face.

His Fireheart, locked in the dark. He could _see_ it. He could see it.

All he could think of was her words about Endovier. How they’d locked her in the pitch dark and she had no way of knowing anything. Maeve knew. She knew all of it.

And Maeve knew how to hurt and destroy Aelin best. If it hurt _him_ to know she was immortal like the Fae, like him and Aedion, how much more had it hurt her?

He only barely registered as the rest of Aelin’s plan was revealed. He simply took Goldryn from Aedion and walked towards the sea, hoping it would calm his thoughts.

He barely made it to the sand before his legs collapsed from under him.


End file.
